Birthday of a Victorian Lady

Today, 20^th January, is the 180^th birthday of Frances Taylor, the Foundress of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God.  She was born in 1832, a special year in many ways in the history of this country.  It was then that people began to realise that the slave trade mightn’t be a good thing, that reforms were needed in the law, the army, the way people were treated.  It is often called the year of change.  Of course as you know, change takes place slowly, and it took many years before any of these proposals which came before the Parliament of the time, were looked at, still less changed.  Yet it was interesting that matters of justice and the way we treat one another were brought to the public arena at that time. I say this because Frances Taylor seemed to be imbued with a passion for justice and a conviction that the way we treat one another has far-reaching consequences, not only for ourselves, but for the world. 

She was born in a vicarage in a small village in Lincolnshire called Stoke Rochford.  Her father, Henry Taylor, was the Rector of three parishes in the district, and was known as a very prayerful and upright man, while his wife, Maria, was a woman who seemed to radiate love and compassion, especially for those who were sick, lonely or old.  Frances was the youngest of ten children, and spent an ideal childhood having no school to go to, as it wasn’t then compulsory to attend one of those rather forbidding institutions which were all that was available at the time.  She was taught at home by her parents and by her older sisters, but she herself said in later years “I wasn’t over-burdened with lessons!”   She had plenty of freedom to roam about the lanes surrounding her home, and a chance to poke into those interesting hedgerows and woodlands as well as to try her hand at fishing in the local stream.  As well as that, she made up stories of adventure which she told to the village children, weaving a piece of string in and out of her fingers as she unwound the plot for them.  No wonder she became a writer in later years!

She went with her mother to visit all the parishioners who were sick, lonely or unable to get about, and she told them stories too, making them laugh as she took out of her basket the goodies provided by her mother, freshly-baked bread from the big kitchen in the Rectory, fruit and vegetable from their own gardens and things like that.  It was a lesson that Frances learned early on – that life isn’t always rosy, and that many people are poor and lonely.  She remembered this when many years later she founded her own Congregation of Sisters. She was to say when in old age herself, “I never forgot the lessons my mother taught me in childhood”.  That’s nice isn’t it?  I suppose most of us can say that now that we have learned some wisdom!

When she was ten, her father died, and of course the family had to move away as the house went with the job as they say. So they went to relatives in London, feeling very lonely and heart-broken after their Father’s death.   But the years in London were good.  You’ll know what Victorian London was like if you have read any of Charles Dicken’s books, and of course you have read them all!  It was noisy, dirty, exciting, dangerous and like no other place on earth!  But Frances noticed the poor, and the contrasts between the haves and have-nots.   In a way, she was already forging her future.

When she was 22 she went to the Crimea and worked in Scutari Hospital under Florence Nightingale.  This was to be a life-changing experience for her.  “No one” she was to say later, "could have prepared me for the horror of war !”  The Crimean War has gone down in history as the most mis-managed, the most tragic, the most inhumane of recent times,  yet it brought Frances many blessings.  Looking at the sufferings of these young men, many of them not much more than teenagers, brought out in her the most profound compassion.  The faith of the Irish soldiers, in particular, and their courage in dying a pain-filled and unjust death was to be the spur which made her look calmly and dispassionately at her own faith.  They were never to know it, but their example was to change her life.  She  became a Catholic in the Easter of 1855, having been instructed by Fr. Woollet who was staying in Koulali where she was working, while he was waiting to be called to the Front.  To leave the Church of England, and to ‘go over to Rome’ as they put it then, was a risky thing to do.  There was a lot of prejudice around, and she was to find out how lonely life could be for a newly converted Catholic when she returned to London later that year.

 But she was fortunate in getting to know Fr.Manning. Many years later, as Cardinal Manning of Westminster, he was to become one of her chief supporters in her work as the Foundress of a new Congregation. He was then parish priest of St. Mary’s Bayswater, where  she went to Mass.  He too was a convert from Anglicanism, and he understood how Frances felt.  There were people who really thought that if you converted to Catholicism you were damned, as you were unfaithful to the religion in which you were born.  That was very hard to take as she loved the Anglican Church in which she had been brought up, but she knew God had called her into the Catholic Church for reasons of his own.  But it was a lonely place to be.

Fr. Manning showed Frances the other side of the great, glittering, successful city of London –  he took her to the places where the poor lived or rather, existed.  Dirty, fetid, unhealthy rooms  where rats scurried about, and children died of terrible diseases.  He showed her the workhouses of Marylebone and St. Pancras, where she visited twice a week, giving those poor fragmented people hope because she bothered to listen to them and to speak for them, instead of merely giving them a little help, then departing to shrug off their problems in the enjoyment of her own busy life.

Soon she realised that she couldn’t do all this alone, so she gathered around her like-minded women and that was the beginning of our story.  We started in a small room in Tower Hill in 1869 with four women including herself.  We became a recognised Religious Congregation when Frances made her vows for life in February 1872. She called us Servants, people who listen, people who are willing to go about the miserable, mean streets and alleyways of our big cities, and bring to the poor  whatever comfort they could.  One of our first missions was in Soho. The Sisters worked in the red-light district with the prostitutes, and eventually Frances, who was now called Mother Magdalen, invited those who wished to train for employment which would provide an income without having recourse to prostitution. She provided buildings which were attractive, with rooms full of light and colour and warmth.  Here she taught these poor women new skills:  boot making, lace-making, laundry work, and printing. In fact,  anything that she could think of that would be useful and help to put food on the table.

She  wanted us to be a voice for those who could not speak for themselves, so that they would get justice, she hoped that we would, like her, reverence each human person, give them the dignity they deserved as children of God, and, like Therese of Lisieux, try to be the ones who put love into the world we live in.

 Are you glad a person like that was born?  As we say ‘Happy birthday’ today, we pray for all those who never have a birthday to remember, who never experience love.  Have a good day, and pray to Mother Magdalen won’t you?  She will help you, especially on her birthday.  Who wouldn’t do that, if asked?  

Bless you. And thank you for taking the time to read this! See our websites and Facebook links on the right panel for more information.

Happy birthday, too, for all those whose birthday it is today.  May you have a happy, fulfilled, useful life as she did, and may she be your special friend from now on.